• by Masha Geller , July 20, 2001

In the beginning, there was talk about the Internet having the potential to destroy print, but those fears are gone now. By now, every print magazine has an online counterpart and many advertisers are beginning to ask for cross-media advertising packages.

Today's topic is an isolated and obviously self-serving research study, but I wanted to highlight the results because they could mean there will be even more online ad opps available to magazine advertisers in the near future.

That's what I gather from a survey MediaMark Research Inc. (MRI) recently did for qMags.com - a company that provides exact, cover-to-cover electronic replicas of printed magazines including all illustrations and advertising, plus embedded audio and video enhancements.

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A majority of magazine subscribers surveyed said they both enjoyed reading (54%) and would pay for (61%) a qMags electronic edition of their magazine, revealed a Beta test of 6,768 subscribers to 14 magazines from 10 publishers. The study also indicated that, contrary to traditional wisdom, downloading was not a problem.

Of the 61% of respondents who would consider buying qMags editions of magazines in the future, 69% are interested in subscribing, 66% in single-copy purchase, and 46% in single- article purchase.

Respondents were positive about the qMags experience: 54% enjoyed reading the qMags edition, 29% had no preference. And 16% even preferred it to the paper version (up to 37% of different magazine subscribers preferred the qMags edition). Half wanted to learn more about electronic versions and 49% were interested in getting electronic versions of the publications read at work/for research, while 46% were interested in this for pleasure/entertainment.

Also, 29% of respondents anticipate that the wide availability of electronic magazines would increase their overall readership.

The bottom line? Ads follow eyeballs, and those eyeballs appear to be increasingly turning to electronic content.